bandsaw blade steel.

K

Kiwi303

Joined
Feb 13, 2005
Messages
295
I've read on here about bandsaw blades being used to make damascus, and mostly it's been called 15N20. Is this the usual bandsaw metal or do you just source blades to make damascus with that are that specific alloy?

I took some timber to a mill to have it slabbed into 2" thick chunks to season and later be made into coffee tables and outdoor seats, the millers were using a wood cut bandsaw mill, two 14" wheels about 4 foot apart with the band running round those. They had a big pile of discarded blades to one side of the yard and said that if i wanted them i could have them, they didn't know the steel type so I just grabbed a 3 foot length to heat and quence and break to see if it can make a knife.

The bands are mostly broken in 3 to 4 foot lengths to fit in the discard pile, are 1.5" wide of which 1/3 is teeth. and are 1/32" thick

Anyone think this will be worth investigation? or just stick with 5160 leaf spring?
 
Most of my home made knives are made of some type of old saw steel and I never had one that wouldn't hold an edge. I would think that with 5160 It would be fantastic, Why don't you grab the rest of the pile of band saw blades and forge them together in there own Damascus.
 
The simple rule for unknown steel is "WHAT DID IT DO IN IT'S FIRST LIFE". If it was a cutting tool (saw blade) it was hard and tough,so it should make a knife.If it had to bend and cut (band saw,two-man saw), even better. I would take the blades and make up a damascus billet with O-1 or 5160, and see what you get. Another way would be to make a canister damascus with them - teeth and all. Might be a neat pattern. Use 1080 powder.
Stacy
 
that sounds like a wood miser set up..

that stuff is most likely 1070 steel
once you get over 6" wide then you get into 15N20 , it's needs more nickel in it because of the thickness to let it bend better
if it's UDDEHOLM steel I can tell you if not your on your own .
see here the UDDEHOLM specs
http://www.knivesby.com/bandsawsteel.html
 
Dan Gray said:
that sounds like a wood miser set up..
Click to expand...

well the mill had "Wood-Mizer" on it in places where you'd expect to see a makers brand name... does tht help?

It'll be a while before I can do anything major to it other than heat till non magnetic and quench, cause all my hammers and the old sledge hammer head i use as an anvil are all packed and boxed ready to shift, along ith everything else we're not likely to need urgently in the next few months since the family farm is on the market.

I'm currently on a sabbatical taking some months off work helping mum clean up and set up the farm for the sale and the shift. And hopefully once the shift is over going self employed after that instead of going back to work.

One of the benefits of self employment is once the list of the days jobs is done, you're free do do whatever you want, as opposed to a boss giving you more work to keep you gainfully employed for the rest of the day. I think i'll make a gas forge once everythings set up on the new farm, i doubt my current wood burning setup could reach anything close to welding temps.
 
I'm stoking up the fire to get some hot coals and roaring draft now. soon be able to test a piece by quenching and breaking. I've also spent ten minutes with an angle grinder to rough ou a knifish shape to edge quench and see how it holds an edge and what the edge quench looks like with this steel. What etchants can be used to bring out the differences in colourisation between edge and spine? I've seen plenty of edge quenched/differentially hardened blades on here with the demarkation line between edge and spine showing distinctly. Will soakign it in warm vinegar do the trick? Battery acid maybe? plenty of old car and tractor batteries around to empty out.

hmm... reading my first post again, describing the saw blade. 1/3 is teeth should read 1/3" or one third of an inch. heres a pic of the raw blace snapped into a short length, plus the knifish bit, with a CD-ROM as scale. the grain where I flexed and snapped the bit off is nice and grey with a very fine grain small enough it looks like matt grey paint. I hope my HT and quench can make as nice a grain :D might be just as easy to make thin filletting knives just out of the basic blade by grinding off the teeth and profiling it up :D

The webcam is crap, makes the grain in the pic look big and granular [:(] but the good digicam has flat batteries so this will have to do [:P]

462486935_ebea456d95.jpg



462486937_0d356130cd.jpg
 
Hey Kiwi

When I lived in Napier, 5-6 years ago, I made my first knife using pieces from a blade used in a sawmill. I got it for free from a place in Napier that sharpened the blades. From memory, they also sold the blades as well. They would weld them to whatever length the customers needed. They used Sandvik blade material. Unfortunately, I don't recall which particular alloy they used. You may want to call theSandvik distributor in New Zealand. He was the one who told me what the particular alloy was. Beware, he may try to sell you a whole bunch of "knife steel" that he brought in many years ago and had been unable to sell. Oh yeah, my knife turned out pretty good. My wife still uses it in the kitchen.

Phil
 
thanks PSO, I'll try to find the Sandvik dist. A'courts should list it, if not google is my friend :D

Talkign about searching, is something up with BF's search function or is it just my browser? I've tried searching for information about etchants to show the edge quench line, but press search and all that comes up is a blank page, the url says it's ttp://www.bladeforums.com/forums/search.php?do=process so something should be happening, but the status bar says done... and the mouse arrow hovering over the page doesn't have a hourglass turning next to it to show the page is processing anything.

I've checked my cache, cookies and permissions settings, and they oughtent be causing problems...

Anyone else having trouble with the search function?
 
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